For a wireless communication system, allocation of resource such as spectrum and time is very important. The spectrum may comprise licensed carrier(s) and unlicensed carrier(s). A licensed carrier represents a frequency band that is exclusively licensed to a specific operator to provide specific wireless services. On the other hand, an unlicensed carrier represents a frequency band that is not allocated to a specific operator, but is opened so that all entities meeting the predefined requirements may use the frequency band. Uplink data transmission on the unlicensed carrier is able to offload the traffic on the licensed carrier.
Recently, some wireless communication systems require that the transmission bandwidth of a device on the unlicensed carrier should satisfy a resource use requirement, for example, being not less than 80% of the total system bandwidth. If the resource allocated to the device cannot satisfy the resource, the device is not allowed to work properly in the wireless communication systems. However, conventional resource allocation solutions do not take the resource use requirement into account.
Therefore, there is a need for a scheme for allocating resource in a wireless communication system according to the resource use requirement.